Need smugmug to use custom hostname instead of smugmug.com in its generated HTML

SmugShooter

I'm having a problem that I'm hoping there's a simple solution for that I've just not found.

The school district I shoot for has recently started blocking smugmug.com, which should not be a problem because I use a custom hostname which they don't block. The problem is that even when using my custom hostname, smugmug is still embedding links to smugmug.com within the generated HTML -- links to the CSS and to all the api callbacks. This of course causes all of those to be blocked, and my pages look like trash & don't work.

I've tried the old "traditional" style and that works, but it of course is very dated and not pretty.

What I need is a way to tell smugmug to use my custom hostname through and through, even in the generated html. Is there a way of doing this that I'm just overlooking?

Thank you in advance

thenickdude

That's not possible. You'll need your school district to at least unblock "cdn.smugmug.com" to be able to get anywhere. If you want to be able to login to SmugMug from your school district or use the shopping cart, you'd need to go further and probably unblock both "www.smugmug.com" and "secure.smugmug.com".

SmugShooter

Lamah wrote: »

That's not possible. You'll need your school district to at least unblock "cdn.smugmug.com" to be able to get anywhere. If you want to be able to login to SmugMug from your school district or use the shopping cart, you'd need to go further and probably unblock both "www.smugmug.com" and "secure.smugmug.com".

It's the CSS & API that's the problem, not the cdn. I see some of the images, and a few of them are even clickable. But the styling and layout is completely messed up, and a lot of the things that require call backs don't work at all. The problem is that even with a custom hostname Smugmug still embeds reference to "smugmug.com" within the HTML. They just need to either make those based on the custom hostname instead, or maybe they could use root-relative instead of absolute url paths in their html rather than hard coding the smugmug.com in the html.

Anyone at SmugMug available to comment with any suggested work arounds?

Thank you

P.S. - I don't need to login or use the cart from within the district.

thenickdude

The CSS is loaded from cdn.smugmug.com:



You probably won't see any API calls made to smugmug.com, because browser security doesn't allow JavaScript to make calls to other domain names, only to the current domain.

SmugShooter

Lamah wrote: »

The CSS is loaded from cdn.smugmug.com:



You probably won't see any API calls made to smugmug.com, because browser security doesn't allow JavaScript to make calls to other domain names, only to the current domain.

Ah, I hand't noticed that. Good point. That actually makes it really easy for SmugMug to fix. They just need to use their akamai alias instead of putting cdn.smugmug.com into the html. Then it wouldn't be blocked.

thenickdude

I think you'll have a lot more luck getting your school district to unblock cdn.smugmug.com than you'll have trying to get SmugMug to change and test the code generation for this. They don't need to unblock *.smugmug.com.

SmugShooter

Lamah wrote: »

I think you'll have a lot more luck getting your school district to unblock cdn.smugmug.com than you'll have trying to get SmugMug to change and test the code generation for this. They don't need to unblock *.smugmug.com.

I wish, but unfortunately it isn't going to happen.

Anyone from SmugMug reading this thread? Any suggested work arounds?

mbrady

SmugShooter wrote: »

I wish, but unfortunately it isn't going to happen.

Anyone from SmugMug reading this thread? Any suggested work arounds?

Seems like a weird thing to block. Did they give any reason?

thenickdude

It's probably automatically blocked because of the number of boudoir and nude photography sites that would appear under the SmugMug domain.

SmugShooter

Anyone from Smugmug reading this thread that can answer my question? Thank you.

mbonocore

I will try to get an answer, but Lamah is right, it would be much quicker to get the district to unblock it as this is a pretty rare case, to be honest. SmugMug isn't on alot of blacklists. Sorry! :cry

SmugShooter

Removing the block isn't an option. I spoke with them. They are intentionally blocking all the big photo sites, not just Smugmug.

thenickdude

But they don't have to unblock any of the actual pages on SmugMug. Just that one back end domain "cdn.smugmug.com". They can maintain their block on the rest of *.smugmug.com.

steamfish81

Having the same problem too. Any way to host the CSS files myself?

Andy

steamfish81 wrote: »

Having the same problem too. Any way to host the CSS files myself?

No.

nfocuz

Lamah wrote: »

But they don't have to unblock any of the actual pages on SmugMug. Just that one back end domain "cdn.smugmug.com". They can maintain their block on the rest of *.smugmug.com.

I think the approach is wrong. The district settings to block SM are most likely set on a global basis. Which is correct. What you need them to do is to add your ip address to the exception list. This overrides any global settings and will allow your sit to be viewed. This can easily be done on all IIS or similar networks.

thenickdude

nfocuz wrote: »

I think the approach is wrong. The district settings to block SM are most likely set on a global basis. Which is correct. What you need them to do is to add your ip address to the exception list. This overrides any global settings and will allow your sit to be viewed. This can easily be done on all IIS or similar networks.

His site doesn't have "an IP address" to unblock. It's a SmugMug site so his domain name resolves to any one of hundreds of possible Akamai caching servers depending on your physical location and time of day, each of which serve all manner of websites and would never be unblocked.

southeasternphotography

That seems like a pretty draconian (sp?) school district. What, do they have a full time employee searching for photosites to block 'cause they MIGHT stumble across a nude photo? Are we talking high school, middle school, elementary school, all the above? Hey, there's a rock on the football field someone might stumble on - lets pave the whole thing. I know this post does not help; but I hate the attitude of a book burning school district administration.

thenickdude

It's America. Kid sees a bare ass = expensive lawsuit for the school.

WinsomeWorks

southeasternphotography wrote: »

That seems like a pretty draconian (sp?) school district. What, do they have a full time employee searching for photosites to block 'cause they MIGHT stumble across a nude photo? Are we talking high school, middle school, elementary school, all the above? Hey, there's a rock on the football field someone might stumble on - lets pave the whole thing. I know this post does not help; but I hate the attitude of a book burning school district administration.

At first I thought, "you're kidding me, right?" when I saw this statement. But there've been a few people in this thread thinking this is a rare thing, or "why would SmugMug be blocked?" But really, it's highly common to block any photo sites, not just for schools but also for workplaces. Having taught, it's not a surprise to me at all. At my spouse's workplace, in fact, they cannot view SmugMug. There are no children there. And to be honest, it's certainly not hard to "stumble" upon ALL kinds of... yes, very nude, but also very "borderline" stuff here. In fact, I was a little surprised at a site that was linked by SmugMug to show a certain principle, on one of the blog posts or something like that. Not because I'm a prude but because it would've definitely been offensive to a lot of viewers & you'd think they wouldn't necessarily draw attention to that kind of site.... especially if they wanna stay un-blocked...

But as far as schools go, good grief, there are all KINDS of legal ramifications. It's not about a certain administration, or any certain person going around checking this or that site; few would have any time for such nonsense. It's just that any photo sharing site such as this is bound to have lots of stuff that, yes, children cannot be seeing from a school location, and furthermore, staff cannot be seeing from a school location. Have you any idea the kinds of hot water (well, way more than hot water) staff can get into even through a possibly innocent "stumble" upon some of the kinds of things that are here on SmugMug? That kind of thing, even if by mistake, could ruin an entire teaching career. Same goes for churches & the computers used by staff.

Without even thinking hard, I can think of between 5 & 10 incidents that blew up in local communities centered upon just these very issues--- viewing of websites from the wrong location. It's rough, because yes, the line can be very fine (between "art" & "porno", or "art" and several other categories) Who decides? It's much less controversial for a school or church or workplace to simply block such sites and just not make room for constant discernment or for giant blow-ups over it. The bottom line for schools is they simply don't have the funding & the personnel to spare on wading through all this. They'd need a person doing full-time checking of websites & making decisions based on incremental differences between a bunch of imagery with nudity in them. And invariably that person would make the wrong decision about one site, that a district-full of parents would be down the school's throat with furor. All of that said, I'm not saying it's not a shame. But at the same time, I personally can't think of many other good answers for it. We're caught between a rock & a hard place. It sounds like the OP's problem could be solved by a solution from SmugMug, because it would probably be impossible to convince the school that un-blocking this one thing would be OK.